Arrival of the Stars
by aeriedescent
Summary: /Nigel Uno came back to Rachel McKenzie at 11:48PM on the 5th of August, climbing through her open window/ 1x362 ONESHOT


**A/N: I do not own KND.**

**Listen to 'Arrival of the Birds' (yes, the title is a spin-off of this...) and 'Transformation' by The Cinematic Orchestra while you read this. Sets the mood. And try not to get annoyed by the run-on sentences; they're on purpose. I'm trying to play with a 'stream of consciousness' kind of style. Enjoy! **

_He came back on the 5th of August._

It had just finished raining. The sky was was shifting slowly from it's previous stormy gray to the midnight blue of the night. Rachel had been sitting on her windowsill, watching the rainstorm take place (she always loved the heavy sound of rain pelting against her window and it's trails blurring her vision of the outside world).

She opened the window once it had stopped, because the scent of fresh rain usually meant a peaceful sleep, and one that hopefully wouldn't consist of terrible, swirling dreams (colanders, odd weapons, the moon, red, blood, _fire, fire, fire, _dark sunglasses). The dreams had started after her thirteenth birthday, and had continued until now, at the age of fourteen. And therapist after therapist could not console her parents as to why their daughter would wake up _screaming_, and _crying_, and _thrashing_ against invisible foes in the night.

_He came back at 11:48PM,_ the 5th of August.

Rachel laid quietly in her bed, not yet asleep (and far from it). Dark purple bruises were visible under her eyes (she always hid it with concealer on the morning). She tried to avoid sleep at all costs. She really didn't want her parents to worry anymore about her, they were already spending all of their vacation money for those damn therapists.

_He climbed up through her open window_, at 11:48 on the 5th of August. He landed softly onto her carpeted floor, and she shot up from her bed, her hair still messy from useless tossing and turning. She thought she was hallucinating at first (they weren't that uncommon for her nowadays, really). That is, until he started speaking. Her hallucinations usually just stood, empty eyes staring, _pleading..._

"Rachel?" He asks, the wind blows her curtains so that they float around the strange boy almost ethereally. All she could do was gaze curiously at the young (boy?_man?_) in front of her bed, clad in jeans a red wind-breaker, and sunglasses despite the fact that it was nighttime. "Rachel..., Rachel it's _me_."

She sits up slowly, not taking her sleepy brown eyes off of him, and his dark, dark sunglasses.

"Who are you." It was less of a question and more of a command. His lips press in a hard line.

"You don't remember." He waits for her to reply that yes, she does remember him, and that she's been waiting for him for so long, but she doesn't. She sits there and continues to stare. "How young are you?"

"Young? Isn't the question supposed to be 'How old are you'?" He really wasn't making any sense to her. He ran his finger across his scalp, soft, brown peachy-fuzz like hair weaving through his fingers.

"I suppose..., but who wants to be _old_ anyway?" He responds after a minute.

"No one, really." He smiles softly at her response, and sits down onto her bed. She tucks her legs closer to herself in order to make more room. He scoots closer and removes his opaque sunglasses.

"Are you sure you don't remember me?"

She is captivated by his eyes; they are gray. But the more she looks, _the deeper she looks_, the more she finds blue. His eyes were the color of the ocean, or the rain. The color of familiarity washing over her like the tides.

"Kinda." She breathes, because that's all she can manage. His smile becomes more pronounced across his face. The wind outside picks up, and it begins to drizzle once more. Neither notice, too entranced by one another, like magnets pulling, and pulling, and pulling.

"Good, good. This is really good. But I need you to remember more," And he's closer then what he was before (oh God, he was so close, and smells like rain), and he's touching her face softly, like a lovers caress (and she feels numb, cold but on fire, and _so, so good_). "I need you to remember. Can you do that 362?"

"362?" She echoes, and he nods his head, (and she sees the dream flashing in her minds eye; colander, weapons of ice cream, and yield signs, tree houses on the moon, a dark man on fire, sinister dark shapes moving about in the night, but she sees millions of kids looking up at her, like the ones with empty eyes in her hallucinations but they are all smiling and cheering and she sees a boy in red and dark sunglasses in the crowd, and it's all coming so fast it's giving her a migraine, _but it feels so good to remember_). She pauses, her eyes glazed, looking far past him, focused back.

"...N-Nigel?"

And theres a smile breaking across his face like the sun rising in the morning, bright and uncontainable.

"Nigel, you-you came back. You c-came back. Where'd did you go? Why did you-_W-why did you leave me?_" And her questions are flooding out of her mouth faster than she can register them. And she's gripping onto him, afraid that he'll slip through her fingers like smoke (_again_).

"It really doesn't matter where I've been..., I just- I just had to come and see you."

"Why me? Why not your f-friends?" But he didn't respond at first. Just wipes her falling tears (when had she started crying?) with his thumbs, his hands carefully cradling her face. They were_ so close_, noses brushing, legs pressed against each other, arms encircling one another, _hearts beating, beating, beating._

"I should have gone and eaten that meatball sandwich with you when I had the chance." And that was all he could muster before his lips crashed into hers, and it was so blissfully wonderful, because he had been waiting so,_ so long for this_, to feel her against his skin, under his fingertips, her mouth moving against his.

And her heart was beating so hard against her chest, she thought it would break every one of her ribs, and her mind was spinning faster, and her breathing was quick and ragged. This was all she had _wanted_, for him to be here, filling in the gap in her chest that had been there for so long, she could hardly remember when it formed.

"Stay here, please, don't leave, don't leave me again." She pleaded when they broke momentarily for air, her breath brushing against his lips, hair cascading in his finger. He swallowed hard, and looked into her eyes (they had turned shades darker), and he tried to tell her that yes, he would love to stay here with her _forever, and ever and never leave_, because that's all he ever _wanted_. But the words couldn't get passed his throat. So he kissed her again, pressing his mouth fully against hers, hoping she got the message. And he kissed her _again, and again, and again, and again_ until her lips were red and swollen, and her eyes half lidded. He kissed her until he was sure she got his message.

He laid with her that night until she fell asleep with his arms wrapped protectively around her, watching her enter the land of dreams, a faint smile painted across her face. He watched her for another moment before pressing a chaste kiss onto her sleeping mouth. He disentangled himself from her, feeling himself _break_ with every amount of less physical (_emotional_) contact, and walked backwards towards the window, never taking his eyes of of her. He groped for the windowsill and proceeded to climb onto the roof into the now heavy rain, _breaking_ his gaze on her. Looking back at her sleeping form once more before jumping, his whispered words were carried by the howling wind.

"_I'm so sorry._" He closed the window.

Nigel Uno came back to Rachel McKenzie at 11:48PM on the 5th of August.

She awoke that morning gasping for air (she had just fallen off the moon in her dream). She sat up slowly in her bed, and turning to face the mirror to her right. She looked different (hair too messy, lips sore, eyes darker than usual). She turned then to the window on her left, it was sealed shut. She found nothing wrong with that (_why would she have opened it anyway? It was raining last night_).

It was at 8:37AM in the morning on the 6th of August that she forgot.


End file.
